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Solar panels and countertops made from recycled materials are among the environmentally friendly features architects Paul Breckenridge, left, and Steven Kendrick have incorporated into their designs for Wal-Mart stores

Celia Lamb

Staff Writer

Architects in the Roseville office of LPA Inc. have designed two futuristic Wal-Mart stores that burn french fry grease to make hot water, use giant fabric "socks" as heating and air conditioning ducts, and produce electricity from windmills and solar panels.

LPA incorporated those and other energy-efficient and environmentally friendly features into designs for Wal-Mart Supercenters in McKinney, Texas, and Aurora, Colo. Both stores have opened, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) plans a similarly built store in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Popularity is surging for green-building technologies, and Wal-Mart's environmental initiative has caught the attention of the retail and building industries.

"They're the major retailer," said David Gottfried, president of WorldBuild Technologies Inc. of Oakland. "I think everyone is watching."

The Wal-Mart projects elevate LPA's visibility in the green-building field, industry experts said. LPA would not disclose the value of the Wal-Mart contract.

Several Wal-Mart representatives did not return phone calls or could not be reached this week.

But does it work?

The new stores are 200,000-square-foot experiments for Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark. The mega-retailer plans to measure the energy production and consumption of each store over three years. The McKinney store opened first, in July 2005.

The layout of the new stores matches any Wal-Mart Supercenter, said LPA architects Paul Breckenridge and Steve Kendrick. For a shopper walking in from the parking lot of the green stores, the 18-foot-high storefront is the first sign that something is different. A typical Supercenter reaches up 35 feet.

LPA used different features in each store to accommodate the local climate. In Colorado, hot air exhausted from grocery refrigerators helps melt ice from pavement in front of the store. The Texas store uses the heat to recharge a dehumidifier.

Both stores have windmills and a "biofuel" hot water heater that burns used cooking oil from in-store restaurants and discarded motor oil from the automotive service department. Two kinds of photovoltaic panels situated side-by-side provide a means of testing the efficiencies of each technology. Fabric ducts, which can be removed for cleaning, improve the distribution of heated and cooled air.

Everything is reversible. If Wal-Mart doesn't like a feature, builders can easily replace it with a more conventional technology. Wal-Mart plans to incorporate the most effective design features into existing stores as it updates them, typically every three to five years, Kendrick said. Already the retailer is considering rolling out closed refrigeration cases illuminated by energy-efficient light-emitting diodes.

Contractor Turner Construction Co. of New York City brought in LPA to handle the design work. Kendrick started working on the project in August 2003 from LPA's headquarters in Irvine. He moved to the Roseville office two years ago, and will continue to manage LPA's future Wal-Mart projects there, he said. Forty of LPA's 220 employees work in Roseville; the office had gross billings of $6.9 million last year.

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